Investing in mammoth ivory carvings is one of the best investments to make today. This rich creamy white mammoth ivory made good material for sculpturing and carvings. It’s harder to find mammoth tusk ivory today. Only a few thousand wooly mammoths roamed the earth in particular areas like the Arctic region where they died and got buried in ice.

Many people got lucky to explore and harvest huge mammoth tusks leading. The discovery of this highly precious ivory made a good replacement to use of elephant ivory for sustainability reasons. Carvers and other artists took to mammoth ivory to make a variety of items including:

There was a possibility of discovering larger pieces and tusks measuring about 10 to 14 feet. Today, such a piece would sell for thousands of dollars.

Oriental artists began using raw mammoth tusks to carve beautiful sculptures, scenes, and figurines. Harvesting and excavating the mammoth tusks happened only in the short Arctic summers. During this period, the traders would work in fairly harsh and tough conditions. Harvesting mammoth tusks required working through melting permafrost.

Fortunately, products from the harvested tusks are priceless and passed on from several generations to make wonderful heirlooms.

Are you willing to take the plunge and invest in mammoth ivory carvings? It’s important that you’re involved in the trade of legally accepted ivory internationally. When new to the mammoth ivory collection and purchase, getting the best carved ivory requires buying form a reputed mammoth ivory collector. Additionally, you have to entrust the services of a professional connoisseur for evaluation and consultation. This will guarantee that you end up happy with your netsuke, sculptures, or carvings.

The high demand for ivory has made prices to skyrocket creating a niche market for fake ivory. Before paying exorbitantly for your ivory carvings, you need to be able to tell the difference between real mammoth ivory and a fake one. Skillful traders take advantage of uninformed buyers to sell them fake ivory since it has the same nuances of genuine ivory to a layman. Therefore, it pays to understand the right approach to avoid purchasing fake ivory.

Real ivory has dentine in the tusks and animal teeth. Other ivory might have a different look with inherent patterns. Fortunately, it’s possible to find reputed collectors even online with 100 percent original and legal ivory. However, there’s a fair share of scammers selling fake ivory to non-knowledgeable buyers.

To a professional, various subtle differences are clearly visible to tell fake ivory products. These are usually made from reconstructed animal bone powder. Fake ivory sculptures have a different texture, color, and weight compared to genuine ivory. The dentine in bone powder has less collagen but has huge amounts of calcium phosphate. This makes fake ivory carvings to show wear and tear sooner than later.

Genuine mammoth ivory comes in the form of tusks from mammoths and elephants although this is illegal today. Other forms of ivory might include teeth of whales, walrus, boar, and hippo. All these various forms of ivory have consistent features. Natural ivory has a high gloss and silky feel, visibly inherent inter-sectional arches when held lengthwise, and variations when looked down into.

Fake ivory products are usually made from bone powder, plastic, and antlers. However, these have a different feel and weight compared to those from genuine ivory. This ivory has no Schreger lines and bones have tiny channels for nerves with blood vessels going through. This might not be visible at first. The trick is to put some light behind and notice the appearance of dots and dashes.

Antlers might have a darker color with honeycomb patterns throughout the center, plastics are usually lighter with a visible artificial look.

To be sure that you’re buying genuine mammoth ivory products requires purchasing from a reputable collector with experience in the industry and good reviews. In addition, it helps if you have some ideas on making out the difference between genuine and fake ivory. This is the best way to ensure that you don’t spend hard-earned money on fake ivory products.